Littlestown woman to help honor Vietnam veterans

Carol Ann Bass said her father, who died serving as a pilot in the war, wanted to help other people.

When Carol Ann Bass was growing up in Lexington, Mass., in the 1960s, she and her family endured animosity from teachers, classmates and neighbors because her father was serving as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force in the Vietnam War.

In an educated, up-scale community populated with professors and employees of Harvard University, Northeastern and MIT, Bass, her mother and little brother were treated like the enemy.

"The anti-war movement was growing very quickly, 1967, 1968," Bass explained. "I was shunned as a child because my father was in the military, and anybody that was in the military were 'garbage' and 'baby killers.' And I got called that.

"They didn't know you're not supposed to talk like that to children," said Bass, who moved to Littlestown 2½ years ago to serve as a minister at a local church.

Those hateful comments did not stop after her father, Maj. Seymour Robert Bass, was killed in Thailand in 1968. Not only did Bass have to deal with overwhelming grief for the loss of her father, but she also had to handle the brunt of growing anger in the country.

"We would get calls all day and all night, making fun of what happened, to us as children," said Bass, who was 13 on that May evening when there was a knock on the front door and the delivery of devastating news.

"People were very mean to one another," she said. "It happened a lot in my town.

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Her father's death eventually split apart her family. She went 17 years without talking to her brother.

"Everybody reacted differently. It's very hard when that happens," said Bass, showing treasured black-and-white pictures of her father.

There is the shadowy, artsy shot of him and his clarinet and another in which he is dressed in his flight suit, standing in front of a jet with a broad smile on his face.

It took years for Bass' personal wounds to heal, she said.

Carol Ann Bass, of Littlestown, discusses her father, Maj. Seymour Robert Bass, who was killed in the Vietnam War. Bass will participate today in the Reading of the Names at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (THE EVENING SUN -- SHANE DUNLAP)

It also took years for the country to move past the divisive war that claimed the lives of more than 58,200 service members.

The dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1982 went a long way toward easing that pain for Bass, other war survivors, veterans and the country as a whole.

This morning, Bass will participate in the "Reading of the Names" at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, known to many simply as "The Wall."

Bass will solemnly read the names of 30 servicemen, including her father's, who died in the war in Southeast Asia.

For 65 hours over a four-day period, a couple thousand volunteers will read the names of the 58,282 service members inscribed on the granite wall to mark the memorial's 30th anniversary.

The event began Wednesday with the son and grandson of the war's first casualty, Capt. Harry Griffith Cramer Jr., who died in 1957, reading his name and some of those early casualties that followed.

"His namesakes were the perfect way to kick it off," said Pat Royal, with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which is sponsoring the event. "What he left behind was his namesakes."

For several days, Bass has been going over the names she is to read. Even that small number is a cross-section of America, she said. Latin names, Asian names and Jewish names.

"It represents the breath of the casualties," she said,

Bass, who has her own grown children now, describes The Wall as a "sacred place" where miracles can happen.

"It's a place where everything comes together," she said.

Many years ago, she ran into her younger brother, Harvey, at The Wall while she was there for a wreath-laying ceremony and stood in front of her father's name. Her brother had been living in California, and they had not talked or seen each other before that in 17 years. He had not intended to visit the memorial that day.

"We were united at The Wall," Bass said. "My father wanted us to be together again."

Bass has been active with Vietnam survivor groups and has seen how the loss of a family member in the war has affected sons, daughters, wives, brothers and sisters.

"A lot of people went into helping professions because of their own pain and loss and alienation.

A photograph shows Carol Ann Bass father, Seymour Robert Bass, who was killed in the Vietnam War. Bass, of Littlestown, will participate today in the Reading of the Names at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. (THE EVENING SUN -- SHANE DUNLAP)

So, they understand how that is," said Bass, who was a banker for investment firms in New York City before attending Yale Divinity School and becoming an ordained minister. "It's all in the individual, just like grieving is an individual thing."

Bass said she hopes the Reading of the Names this year will help draw attention to the new education center to be built near the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial.

Although the multi-million dollar learning center will include information on all of America's Wars, it will highlight the lives and stories behind the names on The Wall, Royal said.

"They left behind families and lives they had before the war," Royal said. "It's presenting a story of every one of them."

Bass' father was an intelligent man, with an engineering degree and love of flying, she said. He graduated from Oberlin College Conservatory in Ohio and played several musical instruments.

Bass goes into a back closet and brings out three old leather cases that contain her father's clarinet, saxophone and flute. She shows off the faded detailing etched on the saxophone.

He was open-minded and wanted to help other people, she said.

"He was very much into equality of women, equality for African Americans," she said. "The politics wasn't right, but his heart was in helping the people of Southeast Asia stop Communism."

Bass didn't inherit her father's musical talent, she said, but she did carry on his sense of duty to others.

She has traveled to Vietnam, Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia on missionary work. She taught vocation Bible school in South Korea and attended to those with leprosy in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Her modest house on a quiet court in Littlestown if full of paintings, crafts and decorations collected during those trips.

She plans to relocate to Burma in the spring to teach English and study Buddhism and other Eastern religions.

"He wanted to help the people of Southeast Asia, and that is my goal, too," she said. "Burma's the poorest country in Asia."

Her travels have taught her that people in other countries have the same concerns and values as we do in America, she said.

"They'd do anything for their children, the same way we'd do anything for our children," she said. "Everybody cares about their children, and if their children don't have enough to eat or are suffering in disaster, it hurts them as much as it does us.

"We have to get along with each other," she said. "The alternative is so horrible."

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